


Final Fantasy IV: Light of Redemption

by wanderingaesthetic



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: Gen, Multi, Novelization, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingaesthetic/pseuds/wanderingaesthetic
Summary: One born of a dragonBearing darkness and light,Shall rise to the heavensOver the still land.The moon's light eternalBrings a promise to EarthWith bounty and grace.A novelization of Final Fantasy IV. Hopefully accessible to both fans and newcomers.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Final Fantasy IV: Light of Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this work is inspired by the Overclocked Remix album of FFIV, called Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption, which can be found here: https://ff4.ocremix.org/ Who knows? It might make a good soundtrack for this fic!

A crimson-bellied airship punched through the clouds above the white-capped mountains that bordered the kingdom of Baron. She was the _Xu,_ flagship of the Red Wings. Behind her, emerging in V formation, trailed four of her sister ships, identical in all but name. The ships rose and fell on the air currents as their ocean-going predecessors had on waves, but unlike those, these ships had but one small sail in their masts, and trailed at their sides great canvas fins that directed them. Their other two masts held aloft enormous fan-bladed propellers. The sound they made forcing the air through their blades could not be mistaken for any natural sound, and peasants below left their houses to look up at the noise of the engines as the shadows of the great vessels fell on them.

In the prow of the _Xu_ stood a man in armor of darkest blue, a twilight sky on the verge of night, indistinguishable from black in all but brightest daylight. On his helm were curved horns, like those of a beast or some summoned devil.

A man in red uniform approached behind him on the deck “Lord Captain! We are approaching Baron!” he said as he bowed briskly.

The captain took a moment to respond, as if he had been lost in thought. “So we are,” he responded finally, and tore his masked face from the sky to turn and stride down the center of his ship. The crew had been swift at work, turning rudders and adjusting turbines as they prepared to make a landing, but as their captain walked through their midst they fell silent and still.

“Listen well!” he said, his voice carrying over the noise of the engines. “I know some of you are disturbed by what you have seen today.”

A murmur went through the crew, the captain caught only a few words in it, but they confirmed his suspicions.

“—innocents—“

“—troubles him too—“

“—thieves plundering from weaklings—“

“Enough!” the Dark Knight shouted, and silence fell, punctuated only by the chopping of the turbines against the wind. “We have done no more than Baron’s prosperity requires! The Mysidians knew too much of the magic of the crystals. The king had decreed it! Remember, we are the Red Wings of Baron! It is not our place to question the orders of our king.”

Silence fell again. An animal scream broke it.

“Monsters, ten o’clock off the starboard bow!” a man shouted from the crow’s nest.

“Aft as well!” shouted another voice.

The Dark Knight glanced around. Dozens of dark, winged shapes were circling the _Xu_ and her sister ships. Their shadows fell on the sails. “Man the cannons! Fire as they come in range!” he shouted. He shifted a kite shield the same night blue as his armor from his back and pulled a long, dark-bladed sword from the sheath at his hip.

Cannon blasts echoed from the _Vermillion_ behind them, and one of the dark shapes burst into flames. More shots rang out with a sizzle of lightning in the air, the impact of magical cannon rounds. A shadow fell on the _Xu,_ with hairy feathers, a long, snakelike neck, and a wingspan of more than thirty feet. The carrion bird that was the airship’s namesake let out a throat-tearing screech as it dove under the ship’s propellers.

The Dark Knight charged forward to meet it. The xu struck, its long neck like a viper’s, the series of quick strikes it rained down on the knight like the pecking of some smaller bird at a worm. The knight sidestepped the blows, and the bird’s broad beak hit the deck, splintering the wood. The third strike the knight caught on his shield, and sliced at the bird’s neck as it pulled back for another. He breathed in as his blade hit, taking in the power of blood and pain into himself through the sword. The bird struggled to take flight, but bleeding now, couldn’t quite get its mass into the air. It advanced once more on its quarry. The knight caught the bird’s head with his shield as it struck again, crunching light avian bones, and the knight swung his sword, his strength augmented with the bird’s own pain he had taken in, and beheaded the beast in one slice. Without its head, it took a few more, lumbering, spasmodic steps. Spurting red-black blood onto the deck, it fell.

The Dark Knight assessed the situation around him. A flock of three batlike creatures with single, huge eyeballs were diving at his men, who were shooting crossbow bolts at them. Some others attempted to get the cannons on them, but they were proving too small and too erratic to properly aim at. The knight leveled his blade in the direction of the creatures.

The substance of what he sent at them when he thrust his blade in their direction was hard to pin down. Some might say it was like a dark purple mist, or the afterimage that one sees after pressing one’s fingers to one’s eyelids. In any case, it was something more felt than seen, the vibrations of a scream barely heard. When it hit them, the monsters spasmed, ceased their flapping, and fell. Most dropped to the earth below, but one fell to the deck of the _Xu,_ hitting like a stone, already dead, rolling its single, enormous eyeball to the sky.

With the last of the monsters dispatched, the knight flicked the black, monstrous blood from his sword and sheathed it. “Is everyone all right?” he called out to the deck at large.

“Aye sir,” a few of his soldiers answered.

“So many more monsters of late,” one of his lieutenants said as he kicked the creature over.

**

The ships landed in the cavernous holds of the lower levels of Baron Castle. As his men reeled in sail and doused the fires of the engines, the Dark Knight went down into the hold of the _Xu_ and retrieved an unassuming object, wrapped in spare rope and canvas to protect it. It was about the size and weight of a newborn child, and touching it made the Dark Knight’s hands tingle and spasm even through its wrapping and his dark gauntlets.

He marched alone through the winding stairs and halls of the castle, to the anteroom to the throne room, where he met a man in the red uniform of the royal guard, with blonde hair closely cropped.

“Sir Cecil, I see you have returned triumphant.”

“If you can call it triumph, Baigan,” the Dark Knight said.

“Would you call it other?”

“The crystal is ours, but the Mysidians gave no resistance. There was no battle. It was a slaughter.”

“Do I detect some bitterness? Why? Is it not good that our enemies know better than to go against our might?” The man paused with his hand on the door to the throne room. “Hold a moment.”

The Dark Knight—Cecil—stood still, his blank armor and rigid posture betraying nothing of his mood to the four royal guards that flanked the doors.

In moments, Baigan returned and held the door open for him, bowing. “Enter, my lord.”

Cecil did, striding forward over a strip of scarlet carpeting on top of polished stone tile. To either side were single files of fighting men. A line of knights to his right, in silver-blue armor, and the dragoons to his left side, armored more variously, at attention with their spears planted in the floor beside them, their helms fashioned in the shape of dragons’ heads. Cecil frowned beneath his helmet. In the past, the royal court had been a much more relaxed, with fewer attendants, and none in this military display, not for anyone, but certainly not for him.

“Baron welcomes you home, Cecil,” said the king in tones for all the court to hear. He was a balding man with a thick, graying beard, sitting on a dais in the shadows of thick columns. “You have brought us the Crystal?”

“Yes, your majesty,” the knight said, freeing the object from its wrappings and dropping them to the floor as he approached. Underneath was a bar of clear crystal, an octahedral prism, perfectly cut and tapered into points, about the length of a man’s forearm.

Baigan lifted it from Cecil’s grasp and climbed the four steps to the throne to present it to the king. “It seems to be genuine, sire,” he said. The king took it into both hands and gazed into it. It had a barely detectable blue gleam that reflected in his eyes as he turned it.

“The water Crystal,” the king said tenderly. “How it shines.” His eyes flicked to the Dark Knight. “Well done, Cecil, you may go.”

The Dark Knight turned to leave, his steps loud in the silence of the hall, but as he neared the door he stopped. He pulled off his helm, revealing the pale face of a young man in his mid-twenties. Shaking out white-blonde hair, he turned to re-approach the king. His lips were a grim line. “Your majesty,” he said.

“Is there something else you require?”

“ _Father_ ,” Cecil said. “What are you doing?”

“What?” asked the king.

There was shifting in the soldiers of the court, no words, no movements, their discipline did not allow it, but breaths drawn and muscles tense in the discomfort of playing forced witness to a family conflict.

“His majesty has dismissed you, Lord Cecil,” said Baigan.

“My men are troubled and confused,” Cecil went on. “They wonder—“

“And you, Cecil? Are you troubled?” asked the king.

“ _No_ , your majesty,” Cecil said, bowing his head and putting a hand to his heart. “I only want to know,” he said. “Why are we taking the crystals from unarmed people? If I understood your plans, I might better—“

“ _Silence._ Do you think I do not already know of your misgivings? I have let your treasonous tongue say more than enough,” the king handed over the crystal to Baigan without looking at him. He folded his arms in the sleeves of his robe and looked down at Cecil. “You wound me. After all I have done for you. If you no longer trust my judgment then I am afraid I can no longer trust yours. I am relieving you of command of the Red Wings.”

“What?” Cecil said, head snapping up, looking as though he had been slapped.

“ _Your Majesty,_ ” said a deep voice from behind Cecil, and a dragoon in blue was breaking ranks. “Cecil has done nothing wrong.”

“Kain!” Cecil said with alarm as the other man stepped forward to stand beside him.

“He has done _everything_ you asked,” continued the young dragoon. “You have no cause to punish him.”

The king leaned back on his throne, narrowing his eyes at the two men. “Very well, Kain, if you are determined to join him in insubordination, then you will also join him in disgrace. I have a task for the both of you. Complete it before you return to my sight. Go to the Valley of Mist and slay the eidolon there, and take this,” he said reaching in his robes to pull out a ring. He stood for the first time in their audience and walked down the steps to hand Cecil a ring. “Deliver it to the village beyond. They will know what it means. Now go.”

“Your majesty?” Cecil asked, taking the ring in confusion.

“I have nothing else to say. Leave, both of you, or I will have you removed.”

“Your majesty,” Cecil began again, but the king snapped his fingers. Baigan and another royal guard advanced on Kain and Cecil, and the two turned heel to go before they were forcefully ejected from the throne room.

Cecil spoke after the doors had shut behind them and they were out of earshot of the guards. “I didn’t mean to drag you into this, Kain.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kain said, shaking his head in his dragon helmet, only his mouth visible beneath it. “We’ll get this done and everything will be as it was.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Get some rest,” Kain said, clapping a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. “We’ll set out in the morning. I’ll take care of all of the preparations. I’m sure you’re tired.”

Cecil let out a breath. He was weary, but not in a way he was sure sleep would mend.

**Author's Note:**

> Why am I doing this?
> 
> Perhaps always, but especially over the past year, it seems like everyone has strong opinions about redemption arcs. What makes a good one, what makes a bad one, who should be forgiven, who should be punished, and who should get to decide. 
> 
> Every time this subject comes up I think about Final Fantasy IV. A 16 bit video game from 1991 in which, in the very first scene, the protagonist agonizes over having committed war crimes. It's a game that said everything there is to say on the subject of redemption, or at least I think it could, if we bring it into sharper focus.
> 
> It's a story about facing yourself. It's a story about love: requited, unrequited, and lost. It's a story about war. It's a story about betrayal. It's a story about forgiveness. It's a story about revenge. It's a story in which you fly a space whale to the moon and fight hate itself. It's a story about what makes us become the worst version of ourselves, and about what it takes to bring us back.
> 
> It's a story about redemption.
> 
> I hope you come along with me on this journey. I hope I have the juice to complete it.


End file.
